Month: June 2017

June in review

This past month I was all over the place trying to figure out what I wanted to play this summer and finding it hard to establish a firm rotation of games.

Among the games I dabbled in were Dungeons and Dragons Online, FFXIV, Elder Scrolls Online, Neverwinter, RIFT, and Guild Wars 2. Yeah. I had issues.

I wrapped up the 10th anniversary quests in LOTRO and progressed some more in the Bingo Boffin chain. I also rolled up a new Captain, don’t ask me why.

I finished up Dreamfall Chapters, felt ultimately unsatisfied with it.

I enjoyed Sims 4 on a very casual basis.

It was a chaotic month, so not a lot of retro gaming time, but I did log in one or two KOTOR 2 sessions. Probably take me the rest of the year at this rate. Apologies in advance.

I said goodbye to The Secret World and spend all of my remaining currency on outfits. In the final days of the month, I rolled up a new Templar in Secret World Legends and began the journey anew.

July’s gaming goals

As I said yesterday, I really want to settle down with just three MMOs for the remainder of summer without further distractions and wanderings.

In LOTRO, I keep saying this, but I really do want to finish up the Bingo Boffin questline. I don’t know what I’ll do with my Lore-master after that, but I do have a baby Captain who could use some love.

As for Secret World Legends, I’d be pretty happy if I made good headway through Solomon Island. If I finish Savage Coast by the end of the month, great, Blue Mountain, perfect.

World of Warcraft will always be there, and I feel that I owe it to myself to get outside of that comfort zone and devote a couple of months (at least) to Elder Scrolls Online. No huge goals here other than figuring out the game, leveling up, and working through Morrowind. Oh! And decking out my one-room prison cell-slash-house.

There are no new PC games on the horizon, but on the mobile scene I definitely want to check out the new Futurama game and the Galaxy of Pen and Paper!

Nothing like standing in front of a lava field with your dumb dog thinking about drinking from it. If you were to correctly interpret the look on my character’s face, it would be “I have no idea what I am doing, but I’m going to strike a pose and make others doubt my ineptitude.” Also, “Hey dog, you’re going to be pooping fire tonight if you keep that up.”

I’ll give Elder Scrolls Online this: It’s slick, it’s polished, and it feels wide open in a way that I think the devs wanted to mimic from the solo games. I have a few quests in my log, but I’m largely free to go where I want and die how I want. So when I logged in the other night, my goal was “get a house.” I’d been starving for housing in many of the other MMOs I’d played this past month — WoW, GW2, SWL in particular — and I have heard really nice things about what ESO has done in this regard.

And unlike some other games that make you wait until you’re level 50 and have jumped through many-a-hoop (FFXIV, I’m calling out names), you practically get a free house right out of the gate in Morrowind. To be fair, there is a short quest chain beforehand, but the most difficult part of that is a 10-minute road trip (via jogging; I have no mount as of yet). After doing an errand, I got a deed to my own apartment in Vivic City — and a quick port to it to boot.

Here it is: Syp’s grand castle. OK, it’s a small room with no windows, but you know what? It’s free and it’s large enough for now. I thought it was kind of funny that one part of the housing quest asked you to buy (or make) at least one housing item. I didn’t have a lot of money, so that little stool over there represents about 1/3rd of my current wealth in the game. I’m worth three stools. The only other decoration I have is a spare pet that I planted in the corner and told to watch over my stool. HANDS OFF MY STOOL U NOOB.

Maybe it’s strange and a little pathetic, but I feel more “established” now that I have a home of sorts on this island. Time to head off and pay lip service to needy red-eyed Elves.

If you couldn’t tell already, I’ve had a very strange month, gaming-wise. I’ll have a wrap-up tomorrow to go more into depth, but the short of it is that I’ve struggled with cementing my gaming lineup for this summer and have instead been wandering all over the place. More than usual, I mean.

It’s been weird and interesting and personally revelatory, but the end result is that I’ve realized that three is sort of the magic number for me when it comes to online games. It’s just enough for variety (I really can’t be a one-MMO guy, just never could) and an interesting rotation (hitting each game at least twice a week) without being too scattered and making me feel overwhelmed with too many “projects” and goals spread across a half-dozen or more titles.

So three. And the first two are not in doubt. LOTRO, because I love it, I’m still having fun in it, the expansion is coming out this fall, and I cover it for MOP. And Secret World Legends, despite the do-over. There’s plenty in those two games to keep me going for a while and my interest in both is high. But the question is, which game gets the third spot to help me settle down and cruise through the rest of summer?

There are a few games I tried this past month that I liked but for various reasons I don’t think are contenders. FFXIV, while nice, doesn’t have its hooks in me the way it seems to for others. DDO was really neat to return to and a blast from the past, but it’s not the future. So that leaves me with three options that I’m mulling over, and since I’m mulling, I might as well be writing. It’s one of the main reasons why we blog, right?

Here are the contenders:

Guild Wars 2

Pros: Really love the combat. Pretty. I dig my Engineer and have invested a fair bit of time into her (almost through season 2). Would… sort of like to see the expansion and season 3. Can be relaxing just to do zone clears. Expansion later this year might make me regret not being ready for it.

Cons: Loot is boring, story is boring, expansion is vertical jungle (and that’s like they designed it to be a turn-off to me personally). Haven’t found a really good, sticky guild. Tired of buttflaps and trenchcoats. Don’t want to grind ascended or legendaries.

World of Warcraft

Pros: Been fiddling about with a new resto Shaman as a healer, kind of like that idea. Could just level casually with no rush to endgame. Have flying unlocked in Broken Isles. Argus could be really cool. Always liked the game and am part of a great guild. Fun dungeons that offer a satisfying experience for healers.

Cons: Was really burned out around April and May. The endgame doesn’t seem as compelling as it did early in Legion. No housing. Sometimes feels overwhelming with too much to do. Subscription.

Elder Scrolls Online

Pros: Brand-new to me. Morrowind is a great starting place for a newbie and a hit of retro nostalgia. Warden is a perfect class for me. Housing! Lots of places to explore, nice single-player RPG feeling mixed in with the MMO. Voice acting decent so far. Visually stunning. Buy-to-play (and I just dropped $40 on it, so I feel like I should get my money’s worth).

Cons: Elder Scrolls games haven’t always been as strong with me as other franchises (I’m not a fanboy, in other words). Combat is not that thrilling. Default UI is frustrating. Doesn’t control like other MMOs.

Putting it down, I think I can rule out GW2. It was getting to be more of a chore than fun the last few times I played it. But I am really, really torn between WoW and ESO. The familiar, proven game vs. the unfamiliar, brand-new content. Both popular, both have a future. I think I could be happy with either, but I do need to choose. Three is focus, four is messy (again, at least for me). I’m going to set a deadline for this weekend and go from there through the rest of this summer.

There’s a metaphor for how Funcom treats its players in this picture here. I can’t quite articulate it, but it’s there.

All right. Here goes. The Big Reset. Starting over from scratch. Secret World 2.0, AKA Secret World Legends. It was probably best I missed the messy head start weekend, but even so I feel a little behind.

Before I dive into all of this, let me just share that I remain intensely conflicted over all of this. I deeply love The Secret World as a game, but Funcom can eat doggy doo for making all of us start over and forcing these changes on us. There is no good reason why a better combat system, a new business model, and some of these other changes couldn’t have been worked into the existing game. It’s a weird case of there not being ENOUGH change to warrant a “nuclear” hard reset of an entire playerbase’s progress. Some change, sure, but at the core SWL is still TSW. It hasn’t magically transformed into some exciting new beast, and I really can’t help but think that all of this is a cheap ploy at new reviews, at grabbing a different audience, and at Funcom’s lack of ability to think of a more elegant solution.

Anyway. Rant over, let’s look at the game itself.

To start things on a good note, the legacy transfer went off for me without a hitch, and my newly created Yeti (Yeti 2.0, even more Leet than before) had most of her cosmetics, pets, mounts, and her grandmaster status brought over.

I did my best to make her look as close as possible to my old character, choosing as 80s as a look as possible. The roller skates please me to no end. I wasn’t entirely pleased that you couldn’t just mix-and-match your weapons at character creation; you had to choose a fixed pair. I went with shotgun/hammer, although I’m angling at doing shotgun/chaos as soon as I can find myself a chaos weapon to equip.

The NEW and IMPROVED tutorial ended up being LONG and ANNOYING and VERY LONG and IS THIS THING STILL GOING? It’s a weird mish-mash of the old intro cutscene, the old tutorial, a new four-stage tutorial quest, and the faction transition bits. It took far too long from character creation to getting into Kingsmouth, which I feel is far more of a detractor.

Oh! New Agartha, let’s talk about that. This is one of the big changes I’m actually really pleased about. Agartha got its own social/vendor hub that’s large and impressive, and — even better — now has jump pads that take you right to zone hub portals. No more weird whizzing about forever on paths trying to get to the third area of Transylvania.

I probably spent a good half-hour at the start trying to sort out the new user interface and control scheme. I won’t lie, it’s a shock to go from The Secret World’s setup (which wasn’t bad at all) to this. I got the most annoyed at not being able to zoom in with my mouse wheel to see finer details and take first-person shots (you now have to hit V to go to the vanity camera and then do that sort of thing). It’s a little like Neverwinter, and bit by bit, I was able to ease into it. I do think there needs to be more gameplay options in the settings.

Probably the most off-putting thing of the first night was some weird bug or glitch or something that made every NPC talk as if they were horribly dubbed and their jaws were (as Aywren put it on Twitter) a Nutcracker’s mouth. The lady who came to do the Templar invitation talked so badly and was animated so poorly that it was like a deleted scene from The Room (anyone see that movie?). This did get better following a hotfix on Wednesday… but I still stand by my character’s dubious expression up here.

I really want to know how this zombie got all of the way up to the top of this gas station sign. The birdies flew him up? Got thrown? Parachute? There’s a story here, darn it!

OK, so I’m just going through combat clicking like crazy and kind of enjoying feeling like my shotgun is actually doing damage (I do like the shell-changing mechanic). Everything having levels is weird. The combat animations don’t seem that radically different, however. Again, why was this so radical that it required a reset?

The quest flow is an interesting change. The whole zone isn’t open for business when you first get there; quests open up slowly as you venture through and unlock them, so you can’t just go willy-nilly everywhere. Probably better for a coherent story flow. I do like that the map turns icons from color to grey when you do a quest, so it’s easier to figure out what you have left to do if you’re a completionist.

Another positive map change is that rares are labeled when you’re in the vicinity of one, and since they have loot bags — and you really do need those now that loot isn’t dropping that often — they’re definitely worth taking down.

One rare I fought was Susie of Susie’s Diner. Can’t recall ever seeing or fighting her before, but she was something else. Multiple rows of teeth, one bloodshot eye, claws, and way too powerful for me. While the mobs of zombies have been pushovers so far, Susie at level 8 took my level 4 character to school. I gave it a couple tries but couldn’t take her down right then. Maybe later.

Always makes me wonder about Andy when he casually throws in “human sacrifice” as one of the darker sides of town life. Guilt eating you up there, man?

Over the course of two nights, I made good progress into Kingsmouth and leveled up to 10. And I also started to feel my impressions change from irritation — at the UI, the combat, the changes — start to shift to enjoyment. Not ecstatic delight, but I started to see some definite positives to this revamp.

For starters, combat is no longer a soul-sucking slug-fest. Encounters are, for the most part, fast and fun, and instead of avoiding mobs during travel, I found myself getting into fights just for the XP and fun of it all. And I started to hunt down rares, take on the new random missions (just local tasks that pop up to kill X whatevers or do X things), and even ran Polaris (which was a success). Once I started to get a feel for this new format, it started to click. I think I could live with this, yes indeed. I just need to get a good build going.

Speaking of which, instead of chaos as a secondary, I went with assault rifle. Guess I just like my range, plus I couldn’t find a chaos weapon for the life of me no matter how many loot bags I opened. Mapping a single-target DPS ability to the left mouse button and an AOE to the right gave me quick options on the fly, with the other four skills on the bar dedicated to more specialized situations. I’m also kind of excited about gadgets, which are new to Legends. I have a healing one and a stun one, both of which are useful in a pinch.

We will see how it goes. I’m not 100% happy or satisfied, but I’m not running away screaming and declaring the end of Secret World. Slight changes to the world itself keep throwing me (where’s that ice cream truck?!?) and the combat/UI takes some getting used to, but if TSW taught me anything, it’s that it is important to adapt to new challenges.

Coming back to town after a four-day trip, I was excited to see that Nintendo finally announced the much-expected Super NES Classic console for this fall. After the runaway success of the NES Classic (we won’t go into grousing about the shortages and why I still do not have one), it made total sense.

So here’s the rundown: $80, 21 games, longer controller cords, coming September 29. It’s $20 more than the NES Classic and has five fewer titles, but it’s SNES, so it kind of balances out a bit. Naturally, I’m insanely pleased and excited, as the SNES is my all-time favorite console (one that I own in many formats, including a handheld version). And the big surprise announcement of StarFox 2 as a pack-in, a game that had never been released, is definitely thrilling.

Let’s look at the lineup:

Contra III: The Alien Wars

Donkey Kong Country

EarthBound

Final Fantasy III

F-ZERO

Kirby Super Star

Kirby’s Dream Course

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Mega Man X

Secret of Mana

Star Fox

Star Fox 2

Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting

Super Castlevania IV

Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts

Super Mario Kart

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Super Mario World

Super Metroid

Super Punch-Out!!

Yoshi’s Island

OK, so let me put this out there: This is a great selection. They definitely chose well for the most part, getting in a lot of classics and genres. Street Fighter 2 is one of the best fighting games on the system, Contra 3 is always a crowd pleaser, Mario Kart is a classic, Super Castlevania is one of my all-time favorites, and so on. The only ones I’m a little iffy on are EarthBound (I know it’s a cult hit but I have never been truly into it) and the two Kirby games. Think we could have taken those down to one Kirby game and something else.

My only gipe is that this list is missing two of the absolute best games for the system: Chrono Trigger and Zombies Ate My Neighbors. (There’s also no sports games other than Punch-Out, which is weird.) Squaresoft is well-represented, as are RPGs, but no Chrono Trigger? That’s such a glaring omission that it boggles the mind. I’d rather have substituted it for Earthbound or Secret of Mana. Or heck, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. That’s kind of a dud too.

Still, I’m thrilled that Super Mario RPG, Super Metroid, Star Fox, and the rest are here. My only hope is that, unlike last year, I’ll actually be able to get my hands on one of these consoles. A pre-order system would be ideal, I think.

The SNES had so many incredible games that I could easily see a follow-up console with just as many great titles. I hope Nintendo will do that in 2018 instead of, say, N64 Classic.

We all have those beloved video games that, no matter how old they get, we still take out for a spin every year or two because it’s simply our favorite. Chrono Trigger is one of those games for me, but another one is a 2000 real-time strategy game that, to this day, entertains me.

On the surface, Majesty (the fantasy kingdom sim) sounds like a very generic RTS: You build up a fantasy kingdom, earn money, pump out troops, conquer foes, win levels. Yet the game contained a big twist that hadn’t really been done before. You see, you can’t control your units, you can only influence them.

While players get control over their buildings and the options they contain, once a particular hero is created, it operates independently of the player’s direction. Rangers tend to go out and explore the map, Rogues will look for easy gold to plunder, Gnomes will help build structures, and so on. They’ll fight if they think they can win or have other helpful troops around, they’ll buy their own armor (which you supply via shops) and gear, and they’ll bring back money for you to tax for further expansion. It’s like creating your own little MMORPG world and seeing how it unfolds.

It’s strange, but this twist took the tired genre and made it special. It becomes easy to see units as having their own personalities (which is further helped by memorable and sometimes-hilarious voice acting and a huge roster of names). I never failed to cheer on units that leveled up high, got decked out in gear, and finally worked up the courage to take out an enemy castle.

Majesty really paid special attention to every element of the game. Between stages, a Sean Connery-sounding adviser briefs you on the next level. Each building has its own animations, and there’s a certain pride in seeing a kingdom come into its own with tax collectors, guard towers, and even cemeteries (which keep track of all of your deceased heroes).

So if you can’t control units, does the game get boring? Not at all! You kind of serve as a “quest giver” for your heroes, plopping down flags at certain locations to encourage them to explore or plunder (of course, you have to add gold as a reward, and the more gold you put, the more heroes are going to be attracted by it). Judicious use of flags is essential in overcoming levels.

Plus, there is a strategy to building placement and upgrades. Some buildings, when constructed, mean that you can’t create another type (for instance, Dwarves and Elves hate each other, so you can only go with one or the other). Sometimes buildings offer you a choice of two different heroes, and you can only have four or five heroes per building.

The end result of all of this is a relaxing, charming, and engaging game with a lot of personality. Sure, the maps weren’t much to speak of (just flat fields in various colors), but it did the job. Oh! And the music was fan-freaking-tastic. Loved it.

There was one expansion that added a number of quests in the far north, and unfortunately, that’s all we got. There are 33 quests/maps in total, and a few years ago the game was repackaged with higher resolutions as Majesty Gold (which is also available on GOG.com). I was really excited when Majesty 2 was announced, but it turned out to be a dud with zero personality and fun — the opposite of what made the first game so great. I highly recommend the first to anyone who would like a RTS with a little free will mixed in.

Being a pretty die-hard Secret World player, you’d probably expect that I did nothing but jump head-first into the rebooted Secret World Legends all weekend and come out with some sort of first impressions piece for today. This is not what happened.

In actuality, right now I’m on our youth group’s summer mission trip, which ended up being bad timing in relation to the headstart for SWL, so I’m going to have to miss the debut weekend. I’m OK with that, I guess. Look at the mess that happened with FFXIV: Stormblood’s head start, and I can only imagine what issues Funcom’s going to have here with this reboot that, frankly, had too little testing and is clearly being pushed out the door quickly and just scant seconds ahead of an NDA drop. I’m happy to give it a few days to calm down before I get to it.

But that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about what I’m going to do when I do get into SWL, so here’s a few things to expect from me:

1. I won’t be doing a mission-by-mission commentary

Been there, done that, literally got the in-game t-shirt. I don’t think you all want to hear me rehashing the same missions I did a couple of years ago anyway, so I’ll probably do more observations and daily adventure pieces while commenting on what (if anything) has changed.

2. I’m going to recreate Yeti

Yeti was my TSW main, and as much as possible, I’m going to bring her back to life for the reboot. I have already reserved her name, and since she’s got a lot of cosmetics porting over, I can probably dress her up in her customary ’80s garb. That also means I’m rolling Templar. As entertaining as Illuminati is — and it is, really — I’m a Templar at heart.

3. I’ll be getting an impressions piece on the big changes to you soon

This includes the combat, revamped Agartha, and smaller populated playing fields. The “feel” of the game is important to me and that’s what I’ll be paying the most attention to, for sure.

4. I’ll try to enjoy the quests anew

Thinking about the “big picture” of how many quests have to be done to get to where I left off in Tokyo is massively daunting and will definitely ruin my fun. Instead, I’ll just take one quest at a time, screenshot like crazy as I always do in this game, and hopefully glean a few new facts and story beats along the way. I’ll also try to do every quest in each zone before moving on, although I’m not entirely sure how this’ll work with the modified quest flow.

5. I’m going to try one old and one new weapon

I have to go shotgun with Yeti — that’s practically her signature weapon. But chaos magic, which I haven’t even touched in TSW, looks pretty appealing. I like the randomness and the clones, so I’m going to mix that with shotgun and see how that works.

6. I’ll be reading up on Secret World Legends like crazy

I wasn’t a part of the beta, but I am curious to read about those who were and to see their thoughts and reactions as they went into the deeper game. There are also new builds to be researched and other changes to discover. And if Funcom ever gets off its duff to deliver a road map, I’ll read that too.

7. I’ll try to stay on top of the content flow

Initially I think we’ll have the game through Transylvania, with Tokyo to follow at a later date, and then the launch of the second season (fingers crossed). So I don’t want to be TOO behind on all of that, because it would just rankle to have new missions come out that I couldn’t play yet. So if the game launches as a stable and playable product, I won’t be dawdling. I will do my best to not violate #4 there, but at the same time, I’m not going to do a single mission every night and call it a day, either.